Art made with jelly beans

"Mona Lisa"

From a distance, it's hard to tell what these works by artist Kristen Cumings are made of. They look like mosaics ... shiny, like glass, and tasty, because her materials are actually jelly beans, which she uses to make some of the most beautiful works (like da Vinci's Mona Lisa) even sweeter.

"I like making things out of weird stuff," Cumings told CBS News.

Credit: Kristen Cumings

"The Starry Night"

Kristen Cumings' take on Van Gogh's "The Starry Night."

Credit: Kristen Cumings

"The Great Wave"

While the painting is on a flat surface, "I want it to look three-dimensional as much as possible," Cumings said. "So using more than one different kind of blue or different kind of red will allow me to create a sense of depth, of three-dimensionality even though it's a two-dimensional surface."

Credit: Kristen Cumings

"Girl With a Pearl Earring"

A jelly bean version of Vermeer's "Girl With a Pearl Earring."

Cumings begins portraits as an under-painting with acrylic. Then she starts planting jelly beans with spray adhesive: "I start at the bottom usually, although sometimes I kind of wind my way around."

Credit: Kristen Cumings

Rosie the Riveter

A World War II poster.

Credit: Kristen Cumings

Sea Turtle

A sea turtle, part of a series Cumings did of endangered species, "just to raise awareness through the bean art."

Credit: Kristen Cumings

Tiger

There may be 600 jelly beans per square foot, so a painting measuring 20 square feet would contain about 12,000 candies.

Elephant

Zebra

Swift Foxes

Her favorite flavors? "I like all the sours, but sour orange is probably my favorite flavor."

Credit: Kristen Cumings

Panda

From Cumings' series on endangered species.

Credit: Kristen Cumings

Orangutan

"I don't ever need to worry about if I'm going to have the right color or not. They've got probably at least 70 different colors -- flavors -- at any given time."

Credit: Kristen Cumings

Macaws

From Cumings' series on endangered species.

Credit: Kristen Cumings

"Seven"

As with pointillism, Cumings' jelly bean artwork invites viewers to step back a bit.

"A lot of times when I'm at an event, I'll see somebody and they'll come up close, and then they'll, like, go far away," she told correspondent Anna Werner. "And then they'll move different distances, I think just to sort of play with that."

Credit: Kristen Cumings

"Fourteen"

"It ends up being like a puzzle," Cumings said. "A lot of times, depending on what the shape is that I'm trying to represent, the orientation of the beans makes a difference. So I'll try to get them all going one way."

Credit: Kristen Cumings

Santa Claus

A jelly bean Kris Kringle.

"People usually ask if I eat them as I put them on, or how many I eat compared to how many I put on? A lot of times I get asked what my favorite flavor is or how many it takes to fill up the whole piece."

Credit: Kristen Cumings

"Tahitian Girl With a Mango"

"Tahitian Girl With a Mango" after Gauguin.

"What do you think would've happened if the Impressionists had had jelly beans?" Anna Werner asked.

"I think probably there wouldn't have been as many of them that were starving artists," Cumings laughed. "I think they would've used 'em, though. I mean, who wouldn't?"